This article is from the Deseret News and written by Scott Taylor.
In the seven days since Hurricane Irma blasted southern Florida with historic force, the LDS Church’s meetinghouse in northeast Naples has served as a spiritual sanctuary, a supply storehouse and a staging area for volunteers helping with disaster recovery.
And for some 45 Latter-day Saints, the meetinghouse — known as the Golden Gate building and named for the sprawling, overambitious community development created out of swampland a half-century ago — served as a safe haven, a shelter in which to ride out the record-setting storm. Most of them stayed from the Sept. 9 eve of Irma’s arrival through Monday, the morning after.
And in the past week, the Golden Gate meetinghouse has gone from a house of survival to a house of service, doubling as one of a number of staging areas operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the distribution of relief supplies and the gathering of volunteer workers donning the yellow “Mormon Helping Hands” T-shirts and vests.
Other meetinghouses-turned-staging-centers in post-hurricane efforts this week stretch from Jacksonville in northeast Florida south to Miami, the latter helping to focus efforts on the Florida Keys, where a reported 65 percent of structures were not just damaged but destroyed.
To read the full article, go to the Deseret News.
